While I'm in the anthropogenic warming camp, I also don't think there is diddly squat we can do about it; growth in China, India, and Brasil are going to overwhelm whatever reductions Europe and North America could make. If that is the case, and things are going to get worse, what can I do to minimize my risks? I'm not planning to buy any beach front property.

While I'm in the anthropogenic warming camp, I also don't think there is diddly squat we can do about it; growth in China, India, and Brasil are going to overwhelm whatever reductions Europe and North America could make. If that is the case, and things are going to get worse, what can I do to minimize my risks? I'm not planning to buy any beach front property.

Selden,

I am likely in your camp on this issue, though I have a healthy skepticism because as pointed out correctly by Jim, 30 years ago we were supposed to be undergoing a coming ice age. It's a complicated issue, though in simplistic terms when I drive up the Turnpike and see hundreds of smokestacks spewing crap into the air, and smell it too, I always think, "Man, that can't be good!"

But to the idea of "diddly squat" I would disagree. The theory that if you're clean by 100 points and your neighbor pollutes by 100 points, the net is zero, is true, taken alone.

Yet all developing nations, by definition, need markets to keep growing. Those large markets can impose trade restrictions based on shared values. Many such restrictions exist as part of trade treaties. "Blood diamonds" from Africa, exotic birds from the Amazon, child labor production, and so on, and so forth. Not allowed to sell here legally. So in fact theoretically, market nation #1 may tell developing nation #2 to clean up its act, or not sell in market nation #1. That's not diddly squat, exactly. It's actually a very powerful market force.

It's also not a simple black and white "solution" either because it affects supply of goods to market nation and therefore demand elsewhere. So it's messy. But the idea that a "clean" market is helpless to influence a dirty one isn't entirely true.

The climate changes every day, even multiple times a day. We have nothing to do with it.

Climate vs. Weather.

"Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, precipitation, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods.Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these elements and their variations over shorter periods."

Hansen's predictions have not been very accurate so he is having trouble getting traction lately.

...but he has made a lot of money.

Um, no. See Hansen's 1998 predictions. Claims that Hansen's predictions were wrong rely on cherry-picking the scenarios used for the predictions. This is a typical technique used by those who desire to cast doubt on the science of global warming for political reasons.

Do you have any credible sources for the claim that he has made a lot of money?

But to the idea of "diddly squat" I would disagree. The theory that if you're clean by 100 points and your neighbor pollutes by 100 points, the net is zero, is true, taken alone.

"Diddly squat" was a creative over-statement, as I can do things on a personal basis, and I can support measures that I believe would have a meaningful impact on carbon, even if as a side effect.

But even so, as long as mankind's social goal seems to be to emulate an energy-intensive, consumption-based standard of living such as that traditionally seen in the industrialized countries, carbon release is going to continue to go through the roof until the side effects start having a deleterious effect on people — such as the air pollution in China, which Chinese seem to be recognizing is killing them in huge numbers. I just don't see positive feedback loops having nearly as much impact on these problems as negative feedback loops.

Put differently, things are going to have to get a lot worse before they start getting better.

Maybe this is simplistic, but how can science determine that global temperature change is due to something particular that humans are responsible for such as industrialization rather than the sun's activity or some other natural phenomena? That seems presumptuous beyond the boundary of scientific reasoning.

By the way, I think everyone should be a good steward of the environment. I just don't think the government should make me buy a $50 lightbulb.